Thirty future New Haven cops began training for the job Tuesday.
The department has made special efforts in recent years to recruit more black and Latino cops.
Class XXI, the new class, includes 21 white recruits, five of whom are women. The class also includes six black men, two Hispanic men and one Hispanic woman.
“Seven of the current recruits are New Haven residents — a much higher number than in recent recruitment efforts,” police spoksman Officer David Hartman noted in a release.
The class trains for 32 weeks at the department’s academy on Sherman Parkway. The subject covered include “firearms and physical tactics, report writing and Connecticut law, traffic laws, driver training, domestic violence, crime scene investigation, de-escalation training and domestic violence, [and] child development,” according to Hartman.
The department is racing to fill dozens of slots lost to retirements as well as to snatching of young cops by suburban departments. (Read about the latter problem here.)